huntingdon

@dyckron@cosocial.ca Privatizing an essential service, Canada's airports or the American postal system, would never lower costs for consumers. See, privatizing the UK water system. The most common consequences are higher costs and service cuts. Get real, Mark Carney.

@wood5y@mastodonapp.uk WTF is a "terrorist connection?" If vandals vandalized Trump's Scottish golf course, they committed vandalism. Sucking up to Trump is not a worthwhile endeavor.

@gutenberg_org@mastodon.social Novel, early 20th century findings of a 24-yr-old woman graduate astronomy student, Cecilia Payne, turned out to be correct: stars are composed overwhelmingly of hydrogen and helium? Then senior astronomer, Henry Norris Russell, castigated her work as "clearly impossible," once again proving that progress in science often proceeds, "one funeral at a time." That is, it takes the death of a dominant figure to free a discipline from their egotistical grip.

@kottke@mastodon.social Locking up toothpaste on the grocery store shelves tells you all you need to know about how high its profit margins are. The principal role of toothpaste is to persuade you to use a brush on your teeth. Much of the rest is wishful thinking.

@franklinlopez@kolektiva.social Donald Trump and Scott Bessent have an Orwellian notion of what constitutes a "violent far-left terrorist." In plain English, it's called a peaceful political opponent. It threatens him by doing something he doesn't like or understand, which is most of the world. It threatens him by possibly helping an opposing party retake control of one branch of American government.

@cdarwin@c.im American corporations have waged war against immigrant ideas since the first, post-WWI, Red Scare of 1919. A young J. Edgar Hoover and his Attorney General backed it with gusto. An America filled with immigrants, owing to decades of unrestricted immigration, designed to fill the "empty" lands taken from native populations, meant the soil was fertile to transplant ideas such as unions, public education, health care and retirement programs. The campaigns against them never stopped.

@CuriousMagpie@beige.party Negotiations succeed for lots of reasons. Among them, when both sides want them to succeed, when both accept the legitimacy of the other side's existence and interests, when both can find mutually acceptable trade-offs. Both sides need a strategy and tactics to pursue it. Success normally requires good faith Unlike Canada's PM, Donald Trump brought NONE of those things to the table. He's a textbook example of a guy, who got what he wanted, but not what he said he wanted

@Nonilex@masto.ai Trump's making a big bet that he'll still control the Senate in January 2027.

@paninid@mastodon.world GM CEO introduces Donald Trump to conference. How to tell the marketing world that you can't read a room or a poll without admitting it.

@hermannus@stegodon.nl @firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social To put it another way, the ends never justify the means. The means are the ends.

Admittedly, Trump and his DOJ attack and attempt to delegitimize the press any chance they get. Facts are their enemy. But the surprising scope of the subpoenas the DOJ is trying to use in its investigation of NYT's reporters's claims about the frailties of Trump's Qatari Bribe Palace suggests that the DOJ is looking for information about more than the subject matter of the investigation it admits to. https://www.rawstory.com/trump-doj-2677249534/

@Nonilex@masto.ai David Hearn should be looking hard at opportunities to sue Jeanine Pirro for her absurd-on-its-face prosecution.

@dianea@lgbtqia.space "Scotty, I said not to transport the three of us along with your cats. Thank goodness you didn't send us with the Tribbles. Three to beam up."

@Nonilex@masto.ai Jeff Bezos wants his WaPoop to be the new Xitter. It's working.

@KimPerales@toad.social ICE goons are soon coming to a voting booth near you, and your post office.

@JEmphatically@mstdn.ca @TrueNorthSpice@mastodon.world If you take your spouse's name when you marry, if you're able, get a formal change of name certificate. It's not a big deal, and may save enormous hassle. We don't know how long this Trump nonsense will linger at the state and federal level.

@redsad@ohai.social Remember when voters wanted to have a beer with dry-drunk George W. Bush, because they liked him? That was before Donald Trump made him look competent.

@personalescrito@bolha.us If NY state wanted to experiment with the use of a "humanoid" robot in schools, why didn't it start by imposing the experiment on the Dalton School? If it had to pick a school catering to Native American children, why didn't it make the android look more human, by making it look like a Native American?

@jackhutton@mstdn.social Let me know when a media company publishing a purported photo of Mitch McConnell gives it a date and time. Better yet, screw the photos. Let's have a live interview that demonstrates whether he can walk, talk, think, move. McConnell's and his staff could arrange that and dispel the rumors. They don't seem interested or able.

@jackhutton@mstdn.social Excuse me. It's no longer fraternity "hazing" when armed federal agents beat someone so severely, they damage their kidney and nearly kill them. At a minimum, that's felony assault and battery.

@KimPerales@toad.social Reichsfuehrer SS Stephen Miller doesn't care whether the bodies are alive or dead, as long as he has enough to fill his deportation boxcars. The more cruelty he can demonstrate and get away with, the more powerful he thinks he is. He has as an urge to be very powerful.

@ElizabethEiler@universeodon.com Privatizing TSA substantially increases cost or substantially lowers security. It can only be one or the other. It also puts a screen between whatever replaces TSA employees and transparency and accountability. Plus, it cuts the number of unionized employees on the federal workforce. A win-win for Trump and his wannabe dictatorship, a lose-lose for the USG, American travelers, and the American public.

@Miro_Collas@masto.ai If Jamie Dimon is afraid of "consequences" for the free-wheeling banking sector, owing to Andy Burnham becoming Prime Minister, it's a good omen.

@theintercept@journa.host Yep. There's also deceit, for example, in how the Pentagon defines such things as "serious injury." To Pete Hegseth, that means the service member will be dead within 3 days. To those not lying for a living, it means such things as extensive burns, serious concussion or cranial fractures, broken bones, missing limbs, loss of one or both eyes, chronic lung injuries.

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social I quibbled whether an IQ of 73 was accurate for high schooler Donald Trump. I based that, in part, on the frailties of IQ tests. In the 1950-60s, more than now, they were racially and culturally biased, tested knowledge of upper middle class America, and reading comprehension. A guy with a learning disability, who never reads, would not do well. But Donald Trump recently said he'd discovered "the circle." It has 3 sides and 3 corners. I withdraw my comment.

@paninid@mastodon.world Whisky Pete Hegseth claims Trump's Iran war has cost only $37.5 billion? LOL. I knew the Pentagon was famous for practicing the accounting trick called, hide the hat, but his is ridiculous. It's also more proof that among his other failings. Whisky Pete can't count.

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social LOL. Pete Hegseth's list of enemies he wants to fight are historical fantasies for him, not real, contemporary opponents: Britain's 18th century army, 1950s Communist hordes, and "Islamists," that is, medieval Saracens in what Europeans called the Holy Land. Even as rhetorical flourish, it's lukewarm spittle that will not impress the admirals and generals, who earned their stars, he was speaking to.

@Nonilex@masto.ai In other eras, Congress would promptly react by imposing an excess profits tax, correctly seeing these oil industry profits as unearned windfalls. Trump's GOP? They'd sooner use the 25th Amendment than enact an excess profits tax.

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social J.D. Vance, the patron saint of National Couch Cleaning Day.

@freedomofpress@social.freedom.press There's a reason govt information is not classified. The presumption is that the public should have access to it, regardless of whether it embarrasses an administration. That's called government, not dictatorship. But it's not what thin-skinned Trump and delicate snowflake Hegseth can tolerate.

@paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Nor has Whisky Pete come up with a substitute for the Navy typically having ships make frequent stops at home ports to refit and resupply. Did he try resupplying large ships like carriers with food, toiletries, equipment and parts, replacement crew by air? Has the Navy not recommended that to him? Does it not have the resources to do that? Or is Hegseth managing under the influence and disregarding them?

@20002ist@thepit.social Donald Trump contracting for long-term housing for National Guard troops doing performance theater in DC for Donald Trump is buying the theater so his acting troupe never needs to wonder where they'll work next. He intends to keep them performing in DC. But that's not funny or a mere waste of taxpayer funds. It says a lot about how much he expects them to do in November.

@servelan@newsie.social Trump's DC projects are just to feed his ego? Who could have known? They sure as hell aren't to make DC more beautiful or accessible.

@samlitzinger@journa.host GOP Congresscritters may not object to Trump giving himself an uprecedented immunity for past crimes and for all future tax audits. But it doesn't mean Trump's self-dealing is legal or will survive court challenges.

@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social Also seems to apply to those still learning how to check their spelling.

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social Is Mitch McConnell: a) laughing in Paradise, b) enjoying damnation without relief, c) cold in a fridge, d) slobbering his food all over his pajamas, or e) diligently doing the state's business as a sitting Senator?

@QudsNen@mastodon.neometropolis.net Another Congress that suggested "integrating" the military with another country's would be accused of treason, of tossing American sovereignty out the window. It's what Republicans do when describing, say, the ICC. Integrating with NATO or other treaty partners ain't the same thing. The US maintains its own command structure, staffing, and decision-making. Trump and Netanyahu want to permanently embroil the US in constant ME warfare on behalf of a regional purveyor of genocide.

@jamesrg@famichiki.jp How does your point two work exactly? If big tech stole a source without buying a copy, it has no license. If it bought one copy, it has a license to use that copy. It's as if I retyped a copyrighted work, then threw away my source. How have I avoided copyright problems simply by commercially using my retyped version?

@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social They're supposed to return it to sender or deliver to the addressee with a postage due notice.

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social The White House's Word Polizei will visit you soon.

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social In that same speech, drinking alcoholic Pete Hegseth said parents would be "happy" to send their children to fight and possibly to die. No one outside of a mental ward or private equity firm is happy when people are sent into harm's way. Many accept it, as the price of defending themselves. But they're not happy about it. Not at all. Pete Hegsesth's a narcissistic psychopath.

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social If true, that's something. Alan Ritchson, the latest Jack Reacher, is no flaming liberal. He's conservative.

@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social And, no, Trump neither knows nor cares that Americans pay his tantrum tariffs, not the foreigners he's mad at.

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social Very Clockwork Orange.

@paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Obviously, refitting a ship could not be done on the fly, outside of port. But resupply of food, toiletries, many essential parts, and crew exchanges could be.

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social Isn't that the same image of Turtle Mitch, in a chair this time instead of a bed? If they hadn't cropped the finger, bent to look like he was pointing at a newspaper article, it would be easier to tell. Continuing to use still life photos, instead of live action shots, obscures that we have no evidence that Mitch can think or speak or move. All we know is what words his staff said he said. It would be easy to dispel the rumors about Mitch. His staff can't or won't do it.

WaPo says Trump has cut about 200 intel agency jobs in the last six weeks. He's done the same with other bureaucracies. He says it makes his job easier, because he doesn't have to face pushback from people who know what they're doing. Trump doesn't rely on facts and analysis. He relies on his gut, which means blind guesswork and personal bias. It's his lifelong way of decision-making. It's ruining the govt the way it would ruin a normal business.

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social More than you can say about the concerned Susan Collins.

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social Milquetoast Mike Johnson's lame move was never going to go anywhere. Trying to amend the Constitution now is pushing a rope. It was performance theater to make Trump feel more secure. But it's congressional legislation that currently sets the number of Supreme Court Justices at nine. Legislation can change that number, any time it passes without enough votes to overcome a certain Trump veto. It won't need so many votes when Trump is out.

@paninid@mastodon.world The real reason that Substack is collapsing is more likely to be Substack.